Tell Me a Story

I love stories. I love hearing stories, I love telling stories, I love funny stories. When I hear a story that I like, I will tell it over and over, not realizing that you may have already heard it. People who I work with get a little exasperated with me sometimes, due to this fact.

When we were first dating and early in our marriage I would always demand of my husband, "Tell me a story," to which he would exasperatedly, reply, "I don't KNOW any stories." "Tell me a true story then. Something that happened to you," I would say. "I can't think of any," said he. So I'd ask him questions until I received some interesting answers, or until something triggered a memory, and he would say, "Actually, there was this one time..." and I would hear the story of a time he was really scared as a child, or a story about that boy in the neighborhood who always hurting everyone because he was such a klutz, about his first kiss (at camp, a girl who's dad few planes), the few times he was ever in a real fight, etc. I've become good at asking probing questions. That, and I am surrounded by people with funny and interesting stories, I guess.

When I was little my dad was a truck driver, and he would come home exhausted every day. Despite this, each night he would read to my brother and I while we were in bed. We had separate rooms, but I'd usually sleep on the bottom of his bunk bed anyway. Somewhere along the way, dad would usually fall asleep mid-sentence, and we'd wake him up with little grace and extreme frustration. This was not a book club. We had a standard list of books, and once one was finished, we would go on to the next, in an endless rotation. My Dad read us the Chronicles of Narnia as part of that rotation. He also read us (brace yourselves for some serious nerdiness) the two Star Wars books that come after Return of the Jedi. Several times. He read us 'The Princess and the Goblin' by George MacDonald, and 'The Princess and Curdie' also by George MacDonald. There were definitely sections I couldn't understand when he first read those to us, but they were added to the rotation and as I got older I understood more and more.

Re-reading a story is wonderful, because after the first read, you carry a version of the story around in your head, and it isn't quite right, even if its lovely in its own way. Then, when you go back to the real version, you add to the facts that you always carry around with you, until, gradually, over several readings, you have a storehouse of understanding and memory about a book that has grown up with you and even grown organically in your memory. Its one of the best ways to know a book, I think. And that is how I feel about books like the Chronicles of Narnia, and the MacDonald books. And yes, even the Star Wars books. Some nights, we would demand a story, made-up, on the spot. One night we said, "Tell us a story." groan. "Once up on a time there were two children named Hannah and David - " "NO." we interrupted. "Tell us a story about Star Trek." "What?! A story about Star Trek?" "Yes. And make it good." This really happened, and although I can't remember the story that we were told, the fact that my dad did tell us a story about, of all things, Star Trek, tells me that I come from a line of masterful story-tellers.

My grandfather is, in fact, one of the best storytellers alive today. Cormack McCarthy notwithstanding. He grew up in Bolivia, South America, in a large house with servants. He could charm birds, and kill attacking dogs and once got shot in the mouth with an arrow. Every time my family gets together we will sit around him (preferably outside with a fire and some coffee) and ask him questions like, "Was there ever a time you thought you were going to die?" "What was the first fight you were ever in?" "Have you ever seen anything supernatural happen?" and get amazing answers.

So, when I first headed to college, I had to decide between my two real interests, art and books. I knew I didn't want to be a literature major, so I was a studio art major. However, over the course of time (and I had plenty of it, as it took me 8 years to get my bachelor's) I realized that my true love was storytelling, so I changed my major and got a degree in Creative Writing. I would suggest this course of action to anyone interesting in working at Starbucks rather than having a real job ;-). Just kidding. My friend Becky has a degree in writing and she has a lovely job where she gets to use her degree!

Anyway, to combine my interests, I've decided to do some weekly illustrations for a few of my favorite TRUE stories, as told to me by my friends. You should check back with me every Monday for a new story with illustrations. Warning: many of these stories have a moral: Do not scare a woman who has just given birth. Do not sit next to the quiet girl in Biology. Do not kill a cow that does not belong to you, especially in broad daylight. Do not tell my great-grandfather no, because, apparently, he will pull a gun on a crowd of strangers.

Looking forward to it!